My next offline business venture will be into racing. I love motor racing, I think the purest form of racing is karting, and I love the formula 1 (go felipe!).

I’ve stumbled upon a car manufacturer over here (in Thailand) that used to build cars for a racing series that’s finished. They don’t actively build cars anymore, but they have the whole series of cars lying around – about 5 from 2004, and 15+ from 2006 (2 different models).

So I’ve been in talks with some tracks, team owners and guys who run whole other race series to see if they are interested in the cars, and so far it’s going quite well.

We’re going to send a couple of cars over next month to Australia for a test run, see how they compare to other prototype cars (cars that aren’t built by a big manufacturer are deemed prototype), and yeah, going to test them up, check times and setups, check the running costs and what not. We know where we can make the cars faster already so we’ll see how it goes.

Big benefit is the cost of the cars – we can retail them at $10-$15k less than other comparable cars. Other prototypes that run in race series in Aus, UK and US ’start’ at about $45k new, and $35k second hand, our 2^nd hand cars that will be reconditioned and tested first, will retail for $25k, and if we can sell them, we’ll be investing in a manufacturing plant here in Thailand, and then getting into manufacturing the cars for sale around the world, hopefully hitting that $35-$40k new mark.

Here’s our cars:

For those who are into cars and racing, the big black and the black white and red cars are running a Toyota 1.6ltr with a sequential gearbox. The white and pink cars are running a Suzuki 750cc bike engine and box; we’re upgrading them to a Yamaha or Honda 1,000cc and 1,300cc bike engine and box which will redline at 12,000rpm. The cars weigh under 600kg each at the moment, but we’re going to be making them about 100-150kg lighter.

OK, before I start this rant, I warn you that I see something that I think is bad, I can be a real asshole, mostly because I think whatever it is I’m ranting about needs a serious reality check and while everyone around is saying good things and being supportive, I feel there needs to be someone dishing out the reality of the situation, and I’m prepared to be that person. Not out of hate, but to really give whoever a reality check in the hope that they see the error of their ways, and either change profession, or step up their game a whole heap (go back to school).

Today’s ‘why the fuck would anyone buy this’ rant, is about http://www.bidcheap2u.com/

It’s for sale over at sitepoint, http://marketplace.sitepoint.com/auctions/36780 with a BIN of $6,000… and starting bid of $2,500…

It pulls 500 page views a month – 60 uniques – which is about right for search engine bot traffic, not people… Mostly what’s being sold is the code, he custom wrote it, and honestly so what?

There’s heaps of ebay – auction style scripts around that do all that his would do – and probably more, and not to mention, since he’s the only developer and he’s selling the site with code as a once off thing, if there’s bugs, errors, issues, and anything else, then you can’t get support, you don’t have updates, you will have to hire a developer to decipher his code, and then work out the issue.

This site is a liability, not an investment.

He should be selling the code to other developers with resell rights, or an exclusive sale, not a site on sitepoint. Or he should be selling a hosted solution and a singular marketplace, a single auction site with your own code is just pointless, it’s like buying a Russian custom built one of a kind car which you will need to manually comply to drive in your own country, and then find a Russian mechanic who can fix it when there’s issues.

Actually, I might start valuing things for sale on sitepoint and wherever else I see them, because as a designer, developer, investor, business owner, and whatever else I am / have been, I think I have a good grasp on the value of a site for sale. I’ve built them, sold them, bought them, invested in them and disowned them.

OK, so unless you’ve not read my last post, I’ve sold my last fulltime business, and now I’m starting the planning of my next ventures.

Since I’m debt free, have been for 10 years, the cash isn’t going to pay loans, it’s just cash to invest, so with this extra cash I’m going to do some things that I enjoy.

The internet is my life almost, so I’m going to get away from it more but I’m also going to get back into web properties and web business, I think I’ll start by buying some dot coms that have profits of the $1k a month and up mark, and delegate the operations and management of them to a new staff person I’ll take on.

I have the advantage of being in Thailand, so a fulltime ‘web guy’ will set me back about $380US a month, I’ll track him using things like rescuetime.com, and I’ll check the sites and what not to make sure things are running smooth still from time to time. I’ll try to pick up a few sites that interest me, all with revenue and hopefully revenue of about $1k a month and up, usually sites like this sell for 10x profits, so $10k for 1, and I’ll try to pick up 3-4 of them, it’ll take some time because I’d prefer some quality sites, not random proxy sites or short term duds.

I’ll probably spend some time working on the sites and working on a plan to build them up more, some marketing plans and future development plans, see if we can grow the traffic and revenue, and then in 6-12 months maybe sell them? Maybe keep them, who knows, just have some fun trying to grow them and see where it goes from there, it all really depends on what sites I can pick up.

And for offline business… well that’s a whole post on its own…

Ok, so my promise to keep posting after I returned from Australia hasn’t happened…

Mostly because my trip to Australia was in part to bring a separate deal to fruition – and that deal was to sell my development company, which finally has happened J

So, while I’m no longer a owner of that business, I’m under obligation to work with it for a few more months until it’s all settled and then I’m off to my next big venture(s)…

My development company wasn’t strictly a web business – we built and ran dot coms, we were an offline business I felt, we sold development services to other businesses and most of those sales were generated offline (90% were).

My other current businesses are a mixture of offline and online, I have a couple of online stores that also distribute our custom products internationally, and I have a sushi train restaurant in town, so it’s a little diverse – which is great.

Right now the biggest things in my mind is what should I do with the other businesses, keep them going or sell them off too, and what will I do next?

Well the other businesses I think I’ll keep, they are doing fine and they are a nice source of additional revenue.

As for what to do next, I have a million and one ideas so it’s a matter of choosing the best one I guess.

Not even the best one, I think I might do something that makes me happy, something I enjoy.

So I’m finally back from a little over a week in Australia, my home. I’ll hopefully get back into blogging this week. Australia was a good but hectic trip, nonstop with clients and friends, the client side was good, worked out some new and extended some existing projects, and the friends side was crazy, lots of early morning partying!

I’m still in Australia, I’ll be back on Monday!

I’m off to Australia this week, I’ll be online from time to time in Aus, but I don’t know if I’ll have time to blog much, I’m back in about a week in a half…

So don’t worry, I’ll be back abusing people and businesses in no time

Look, the servers are good, the network is good, the pricing is good, its just the support - there isn’t any.

I HAD 4 GridService accounts with them, now I have 1 with them, my average wait time for tech support is about 2 DAYS.

Well I have 2 GS with them still, about to cancel 1 more now since there’s a ticket open right now that’s over 1 DAY old with NO response at all. Typical shit from them.

So yeah, that’s in progress of being canceled. I recommend slicehost.com, engineyard.com and theplanet.com.

So yeah, mediatemple, feel free to go fuck yourself because your lack of a support department has cost me over $2k (client is pissed at me since they can’t respond). Clients eh? Gotta hate them, but can’t always blame them.

Oh also, I just bought a Windows VPS from a company in Australia, there was an issue, I was able to get on to their live support, and talking to a real person - in Australia in about 20 seconds. Problem solved.

eBay is now only accepting PayPal for online payment – citing that your 4 times safer using PayPal than any other payment method.

Which is bullshit, it’s so easy to receive goods and then reverse a payment on PayPal it’s not funny, it’s so hard to get your money back from people who reverse charges for a bullshit reason it’s crazy.

This is just another move from eBay to jack up its stock price and profiteer since their stock has been crashing over the last few months – well years overall (it was almost $60 in 2002, $40 4 months ago and about a week ago it was down around $25).

It wasn’t too long ago they raised their percentage fee from like 3% to 10% in one hit, they make shitloads off PayPal as it is and locking every other payment provider out of the eBay market isn’t just a monopoly within eBay, but it’s unfair trading as a whole.

So much commerce is done via eBay now days that there needs to be other options for people who don’t want to pay through PayPal – either with an account or with their credit card.

Google is desperately trying to gain some traction with their Google Checkout, but it’s getting nowhere because of moves like this, if you could use Google Checkout on eBay I’m sure heaps of people would be using it.

I don’t know about you, but Yahoo buying out a Web Analytics company called IndexTools, and also testing Google ads on 3% of the Yahoo network search results is a sign of desperation from Yahoo – trying to stop a takeover that I think should happen.

Microsoft acquiring Yahoo in my opinion is a good move for Microsoft, and maybe even a good move for the internet in general, I’m still a little divided on that 2^nd point.

It’s great for Microsoft because Yahoo has a following of developers and general public, both of which Microsoft needs to set up its internet campaign overall – in followers, developers, advertising and more.

Not only that, Yahoo has a whole heap of other services that could be easily folded into the Microsoft family of services, such as their poor music delivery service, mail, developer network, geocities etc etc.

As for Yahoo, well I never thought they had the long term fire power to enter a war with Microsoft and Google, sure they have big numbers, and have for a long time, but Google came along pretty quick and stole a large share of that, and Microsoft is really pushing themselves into the arena.

Yahoo IS innovating, but people aren’t hearing it as loud as when Google innovates, I think Microsoft would do Yahoo some good, Microsoft knows how to make noise, even if it’s not always good. Yahoo has a lot of services that have been launched pretty poorly and developed poorly too, they seem to give up on them at times as well, I think this is where the Microsoft side of things can really help, Microsoft seem to stick with things and push enough resources and money into something until it either works well, or is completely dead.

Personally I think overall it’ll be a good move to join the two, the public might even benefit here somehow, not sure just how yet – besides some nicer apps around, it might mean there’s a gap in the market for another search provider, who knows.